European Commercial Expansion Research Articles

La centralità dei nomadi nel commercio della Caucasia settentrionale. Rapporti diplomatici fra i Mongoli e Venezia sul Mar d’Azov nel XIV secolo

This paper examines the significant role of nomadic populations in shaping trade networks in Northern Caucasia in the 14th century. Focusing on the diplomatic relations between the Mongol elite of the Ulus Jochi (Golden Horde) and the Venetian authorities, the paper explores how nomads’ idea of juridical spaces and attitude towards commerce dictated the pace of European presence in the Northern Black Sea basin, sometimes favoring, sometimes halting mobility, economic practices, and cultural exchanges in the region. By analyzing historical sources and accounts, this study aims to show the active role of the Mongols in regulating the European commercial expansion in Northern Caucasia during the difficult 14th century.

The trans-Saharan slave trade in the context of Tunisian foreign trade in the western Mediterranean

The paper explores effects of local Tunisian reforms and broader economic and political developments occurring in the western Mediterranean shores during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries on the trans-Saharan slave trade. While the scanty available literature stresses the insignificance of the trans-Saharan slave trade to Tunisia, this paper examines the complex interplay of Tunisian economic reforms and the burgeoning European commercial expansion that shaped the Tunisian economy and, in turn, the trans-Saharan slave trade. Impact of these developments was not limited to Tunisian trade with Europe and the Levant. A significant increase in trade activities between the Regency of Tunis and the African interior can be observed on a number of levels. In particular, aside from the favourable conditions arising from Hammuda Pasha's reform and economic policies, expanding European trade in Tunisia, mainly after 1788, was a major force behind a continuation and growth of the trans-Saharan slave trade which continued until outlaw in 1841. In addition to Hammuda Pasha's economic reform policies that led to the integration of the Ghadames caravan trade into burgeoning economy, trade growth between Tunisia and the African interior was further fuelled by European capital infusion in the western Mediterranean.

Entre o sentido da colonização e o arcaísmo como projeto: a superação de um dilema através do conceito de capital escravista-mercantil

Neste artigo, discute-se a proposta de Pires e Costa (1995, 2000) segundo a qual a economia brasileira no período escravista teria estado sujeita a uma forma específica do capital: o capital escravista-mercantil. Ela permite a superação da dicotomia entre o modelo interpretativo do Sentido da Colonização, proposto originalmente por Caio Prado Júnior, e o modelo do Arcaísmo como Projeto, proposto por Fragoso e Florentino (2001). O primeiro, por retratar a sociedade colonial como uma projeção imediata da expansão comercial européia, tem enfrentado dificuldades em acomodar as recentes evidências empíricas de que a economia colonial podia apresentar uma relativa autonomia, realizando acumulação endógena. O segundo, ao tentar de forma explícita acomodar essas evidências, acaba recusando a existência de um sentido da colonização tal como originalmente formulado. Para explicitar como o modelo do capital escravista-mercantil supera esse dilema, apresentamos uma analogia com o desenvolvimento da teoria do valor de Marx em O Capital.